The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang :: :: University of Virginia Library

Which my name is Stoker Bill,
And a pleasant post I fill,
And the care the ladies take of me is clipping;
And they've made me pretty snug
With a blooming Persian rug
In the Ladies' Model School-board Training Shipping!

There's my Whistler etchings, there,
As are quite beyond compare,
And a portrait of Miss Connie Gilchrist skipping;
From such art we all expect
Quite a softening effect,
In the Ladies' new Æsthetic Training Shipping.

And my beer comes in a mug—
Such a rare old Rhodian jug!
And here I sits æsthetically sipping;
And I drinks my grog or ale
On a chair by Chippendale—
We've no others in our Model Training Shipping.

213

There's our first Liftenant, too,
Is a fine old (China) Blue,
And you do not very often catch him tripping
At a monogram or mark,
But no more than Noah's ark,
Does he know the way to manage this here Shipping.

But the boys! the boys, they stands
With white lilies in their hands,
And they do not know the meaning of a whipping;
For the whole delightful ship is
Like a dream of Lippo Lippi's,
More than what you mostly see in modern Shipping.

Well, some coves they cuts up rough,
And they call æthetics stuff,
And they says as we've no business to keep dipping
In the rates; but ladies likes it,
And our flag we never strikes it;
Bless old England's new Æsthetic Training Shipping!